


a simple accident of birth

by beelzebubble_tea



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Rigel Black series (murkybluematter)
Genre: Gen, Inspired by The Rigel Black Chronicles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:34:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27563881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beelzebubble_tea/pseuds/beelzebubble_tea
Summary: Daphne Greengrass is a half-blood.What now?
Relationships: Astoria Greengrass & Daphne Greengrass, Leo Hurst & Daphne Greengrass
Comments: 29
Kudos: 65
Collections: Rigel Black Exchange Round 2





	a simple accident of birth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FeatheryMinx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeatheryMinx/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Futile Facade](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/713530) by murkybluematter. 



The letter came in October.

It was a warm Tuesday afternoon, and hazy sunlight streamed through the latticed windows in Lady Acantha Greengrass’s study, falling across the sheaves of papers on her desk. With the Lord Greengrass’s time taken up by his position on the Wizengamot, it fell to Acantha to manage the house’s finances, for she could never trust a hired fiduciary. A few lines of ink on this particular document had smudged, rendering the words unreadable. How unprofessional.

Acantha raised her wand to corral the ink back into its proper place but was interrupted by a tiny nudge from the wards. An owl, winging its way towards the manor.

Dozens of owls flew to and from Greengrass Manor every day, and the wards didn’t need to notify her every time one drew near, but Acantha liked that they did. Although she ostensibly had less control over the wards as her husband Apollon, the Lord Greengrass, the fact was that while Apollon spent his days in the Ministry or rubbing elbows with his fellow Lords, Acantha lived, breathed, and worked within the wards of Greengrass Manor. The wards were a part of her. Apollon scarcely paid them any mind save for when there was a disturbance or suspicious activity along the edge of the grounds. Acantha, on the other hand, felt the comforting weight of the wards every moment she was awake, always faintly aware of the swooping post owls, the house elves’ constant apparations, the buzzing enchantments on every stone and staircase.

Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

There was the owl now. Here at her window and not diverted to the mail reception room? It must be urgent. Acantha rose from her desk and crossed to open the window, letting the owl in. Was this one of the Hogwarts barn owls…? Acantha’s chest clenched. _Please, no bad news._

She sliced the knotted twine around the scroll with a bit of wandless magic, her hands carefully steady as she set it aside. _No bad news, no bad news_ , she pleaded to the rolled-up parchment. Then she ran out of excuses to delay longer, so she unraveled the scroll and began to read.

_Lord and Lady Greengrass,_

__

__

_We regret to inform you of an incident that has occurred involving your daughter Daphne Greengrass. This afternoon, usage of an ancestry potion brought to light that, contrary to her official documentation, Miss Greengrass is not a pureblood as categorized under current law. Due to her blood status, she will be removed from enrollment at Hogwarts forthwith…_

Acantha’s eyes grew wide and she brought a hand to her mouth as she read the words once, twice, three times to ensure that she’d understood them correctly, that this wasn’t some horrible nightmare or hallucination that would dissipate when she awoke. No. It was real, and it was catastrophic.

Everyone knew. If they didn’t yet, they would soon enough. There was no way to cover up an expulsion from Hogwarts, and no doubt her daughter’s peers had already begun to spread rumors of her blood. Acantha barely stopped herself from clenching her fist and burning the letter in her hand to ashes. It would hide nothing, and it would only serve to anger Apollon further. Oh Merlin, Apollon… What should she do? What _could_ she do? She threw the letter—only slightly creased—onto her desk and paced the room, mind whirling frantically. Her heart thundered in tandem.

She had been careful, so careful. Diederik was extraordinarily handsome and incredibly… talented to boot, but not talented enough to make her lose her wits. She’d been rigorous with her sterility spells, and when those had failed—as they sometimes did near the full moon—she’d met with Diederik and told him she never wanted to see him again. Alas, the loss of a lover. But, owing to her bitter resolve, not the loss of her reputation.

Now, however—now Acantha might lose that too.

“No, no, no,” she muttered under her breath. “How could this have happened? No, that’s not important.” What was important right now was finding a way out of this disaster. Did such a way exist?

Apollon would be furious. He and Acantha did not exactly love each other, but the humiliation from the public revelation that his wife had been unfaithful—with a muggleborn, no less—would no doubt enrage him. _As if he hasn’t committed adultery himself._ But of course, any resultant pregnancies would be the burden of the mother, and Apollon could walk off unscathed with no one the wiser.

Would he be angry enough to annul their marriage and disown Daphne? Annulment was usually frowned upon, but in these circumstances only the very conservative and the very radical would fault him. No one would bat an eye at disownment.

If Apollon disowned Daphne, Acantha was sure Diederik would take her in, bleeding heart that he was. Daphne would be devastated, but she would survive. If Apollon annulled their marriage… where would Acantha go? She would be a Carrow again, Book of Silver nobility, but disgraced—and she was too old to be remarried to anyone of high standing who wasn’t a widow, anyway. Moreover, there was no guarantee that the House of Carrow wouldn’t disown her as well—she wasn’t even of the main branch.

She tried not to think it, but inevitably her mind turned to Diederik. He’d loved her once, the foolish man, had looked at her with more soft warmth and affection than she’d ever asked for. But it had been nearly fifteen years since she’d cut ties forever, and even the strongest feelings changed in far less time. There was no reason she should expect anything from him.

The wards nudged her again, and what they showed her this time made her heart jump in fear. _Apollon_. He must have heard somehow—or his work could have simply ended early today, Acantha told herself. No need to jump to conclusions. Watching her husband step out of the Floo, she hoped she could break the news to him herself; that would give her a chance to soothe his inevitable fury.

Acantha took two deep breaths and straightened her robes. Then she strode to the second floor parlor, forcefully calm, and arranged herself on the settee, where Apollon found her a minute later.

He knew. There was no mistaking it: he knew. If Acantha hadn’t surmised from his tense, purposeful stride through the halls, or the hard, pinched look on his face, or the blotchy red and white coloring of his cheeks, then she would certainly realize now.

“Acantha,” he said. His voice was tight and thrumming with barely-suppressed emotion.

Clearly, he was not in the mood for long explanations. “Apollon,” she said swiftly. “It was fifteen years ago. We haven’t spoken since.” Quick, what else could she say? “I—”

Apollon spared her the effort.

“Acantha,” he repeated, voice shaking even more. He inhaled—his breath hitched, and the dam broke. “YOU LYING BITCH!”

Acantha winced. Clearly, he was not in the mood for any explanations at all.

“You filthy blood traitor,” Apollon spat, “disgusting, worthless—you—you—you _slag!_ ”

“Please, Apollon, calm down,” she tried, eyeing the vases shuddering on nearby tables.

“CALM DOWN?” he roared. The vases shattered. “You want me to calm down? You cheated on me, you whore! You touched me with the same hands you used to touch that _mudblood_ —and now ALL OF SOCIETY KNOWS IT! You should have killed that little half-blood I thought was my daughter while you had the chance—”

Acantha was on her feet with her wand aimed at his chest before she could think. “Say that again.”

Apollon sneered. “You should have killed that half-blood—”

“Cru—” _No, there lies Azkaban_ — “Bombarda!”

Apollon ducked, and the wall behind him exploded like it’d been struck with three Bombarda Maximas. His wand was in his hand too now. “Diffindo—!”

Acantha batted the hex aside with her wand, wincing as the magical backlash stung her hand. She was out of practice, no surprise as the last time she’d seriously duelled was during her Hogwarts days. “I’ll kill you, myself, and everyone else in the world before I’d kill one of my daughters,” Acantha hissed.

“Filthy blood traitor,” Apollon growled again, and curses flew.

Light flashed and furniture splintered, a storm of spells whipping around the parlor as Lord and Lady exchanged furious fire. Red and purple hexes, bright white curses, innocently blue charms designed to distract and hinder so that a far deadlier spell could meet its target. Shielding, deflecting, dodging—their feet took them through the corridors and sitting rooms of Greengrass Manor until they came to the grand entrance hall, where Acantha disarmed Apollon and leveled her wand at his chest.

“Listen to me,” she began, panting, but she was cut off when Apollon threw his head back and bellowed with harsh, mocking laughter.

“Listen to you? I don’t think you’re in the position to be making demands of me—in my own ancestral manor,” he drawled with a growing smirk.

 _No_ —

“I, Lord Greengrass,” Apollon called out, eyes glinting with satisfaction and the glow of cresting magic, “do not claim Acantha Carrow as a wife, protector, or friend. Let her be cast out of my heart and home—”

“Silencio!” she screamed.

“—and never again may she be a warden of these halls,” Apollon finished, and her spell fizzled out of existence a hair’s width from his face.

Acantha… Acantha was empty. Something was suddenly missing from the world, and she swayed on her feet as if she had lost her sense of balance. She was blind, deaf, unseeing—there was nothing there, nothing, and she was empty. She had not lost her sense of balance. She had lost the wards.

“No,” she breathed.

And she realized that she had been wrong—where the comforting warmth of the wards had been was not merely a void, not a simple emptiness. Where the wards had always soothed her with constant wordless whispers of _You’re safe, you’re protected, there comes an owl now with a newspaper, you’re safe, you’re here, you’re here_ — Now they turned on her, cold and distant and accusing, and said _Stranger, intruder, you are not welcome here, you are not welcome._

“You feel it, don’t you?” Apollon asked. His smirk was gone, and his rage had frozen into an icy anger that turned his face to stone. “You aren’t welcome here. You are no wife of mine, and that half-blood is not my daughter.”

“You—you—” Acantha was still reaching out, grasping desperately, pleading, begging for the wards to return to her. _This can’t be, this can’t be, I’m blind, I’m so so so empty…_

“GET OUT!” Apollon shouted.

The great double doors slammed open with a thunderous bang, and Acantha flinched without thinking and stumbled backwards, through the doors and down the stone steps, staggering down the long cobblestone path, falling over herself as the front gates swung open and the wards _shoved_ her through. Tears slipping down her face, she turned and fled away from the manor house, her silk robes slashed and burnt, streaming behind her. When she reached the edge of the wards, she shuddered one last time at the feeling of their hostile coldness. Then, she squeezed her eyes shut and disapparated.

~~~

“You’re—you’re what?” Astoria Greengrass looked from her sister’s tear-streaked face to the headmaster’s sorrowful one. “This… you… you’re joking.”

“Ria—”

“Miss Greengrass—”

“You’re joking,” Astoria insisted, louder this time. “You have to be. Daphne can’t be a—a—”

Daphne stared helplessly at her, breath still choked and ragged, hitching painfully in her chest.

Astoria looked back with wide blue eyes. “Daph, tell me—tell me it isn’t true,” she pleaded.

“Ria,” Daphne stammered, and she felt tears welling up again, her chest clenching, the hot lump in her throat almost too large to speak around. “Ria,” she attempted again, then burst into fresh sobs. _I hate this, I hate this, I hate everything…_

“I’m afraid it is the truth,” Dumbledore said softly. “Miss Greengrass, your sister is a half-blood, and she will no longer be able to attend Hogwarts.”

Astoria stared at Dumbledore for a long moment, hands shaking. Then, she asked in a very small, hesitant voice still tinged with shock and disbelief, “Where will she go?”

“There are a number of international schools, English-speaking included, that may accept her in the middle of the semester due to her circumstances. Your parents may also choose to school her at home—”

The fireplace flared green, and a woman stepped out.

“Mother!” Astoria exclaimed. Daphne looked up in horror.

Dumbledore’s eyes widened at her appearance. “Lady Greengrass—”

“Carrow,” she said bitterly, “and I’m not a lady anymore, either.” Acantha’s fine robes were marred with marks that even a dozen repair spells couldn’t hide, her face pale and her usually elaborate hair tied up in a simple bun.

“Mother, what happened to you?” Astoria cried, rushing over and pressing her hands to her mouth. “Are you all right?”

Dumbledore cleared his throat. “Please, Ms. Carrow, take a seat. I’ll request some healing potions for you, if you don’t mind. Would you tell us what happened?”

“As if you haven’t already guessed,” Acantha snapped, but she sat down. Astoria hovered next to her. “The Lord Greengrass heard of Daphne’s situation.”

Daphne inhaled sharply.

“He was… upset. I am no longer his wife, as far as magic is concerned, and…” Acantha turned her gaze to Daphne and reached out to touch her shoulder. “Daphne is no longer his daughter.”

“No!” Daphne wailed. She clutched at her face, whimpering. “No, he can’t—he can’t—I won’t—” Her words dissolved into incoherency, and she flung herself at her mother, clinging to her and sobbing into her robes. “You can’t let him, you can’t, he can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…”

Acantha wrapped her arms around her daughter, her own eyes red-rimmed from earlier weeping. Astoria was frozen beside them, stricken and overcome with uncertainty, before her face crumpled and she threw herself onto Daphne, crying.

“I’m sorry, Daph, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

Quietly, Dumbledore stepped out of his office and closed the door behind him. It was best to let them have their privacy.

When he returned, Daphne and Astoria had mostly composed themselves. Acantha was hard-faced and resolute, and she downed the two healing potions he handed her before speaking. “Thank you for informing me of the matter so promptly, Headmaster,” she said. “Unfortunately, Lord Greengrass will likely be here any minute, so Daphne and I must leave posthaste. Will you be so kind as to ensure that no harm comes to Astoria? Some of her classmates may take the news unfavorably.”

“I shall try my best,” Dumbledore promised. “I am sorry that this happened, but I wish you luck, and you as well, Miss—Daphne.”

Daphne scowled, wet-eyed, at the ground and didn’t meet his gaze.

“Thank you,” Acantha said. She touched her younger daughter’s elbow and murmured, “Remember what I said: pragmatism of a Greengrass, ruthlessness of a Carrow. Come, Daphne.”

Daphne rose and followed her mother to the fireplace, where she paused and looked back at the door to the office, as if she could see through it to the rest of Hogwarts and everything that she would be leaving behind forever. Lip trembling, she stepped into the emerald flames and vanished.

~~~

Dirk Cresswell appeared with a _pop_ on a small street corner in Highfields. It was a lovely autumn afternoon stretching into evening, and he’d had a steady, productive day at work. He hummed to himself as he walked up the hill towards his house, passing rows of quaint, peaceful buildings, but as he neared his home, he noticed two figures standing on the pavement out front. One was taller, a woman, while the other was shorter and slighter—a teenager, maybe.

Then the woman's features came into view, and Dirk stopped in his tracks when he recognized her. “There’s no way,” he muttered in disbelief, shaking his head and looking again. There was no mistaking it. “What in the bloody hell…?”

There was nothing to do but walk the rest of the way towards them. Dirk came within polite speaking distance and halted. He and the woman met gazes for a moment, saying nothing.

She broke the silence. “Diederik.” Her mouth parted as if she was going to continue, but nothing more came out.

“It’s Dirk,” Dirk said, half long-shuttered habit and half because he had no idea what to say.

“Dirk, then—”

His eyebrows flew up. All the hundreds of times he’d told her before, she had never once listened. Either something was very wrong, or fifteen years with that bastard Greengrass had turned her into a yielding housewife. Noticing, then, the marks on her robes and the disarray of her long blond hair, Dirk guessed that it wasn’t the latter.

“Acantha,” he began, and paused as some strange emotion swelled in his chest. Ever since that day, he had refrained from so much as speaking her name, and he had thus far succeeded. This, now, was… strange. “Why—what— _what_ are you doing here? With…” Dirk glanced at the girl he’d avoided looking at as soon as he’d realized who she was. She was staring at him, distressed and yet visibly scornful. “With her.”

Acantha placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “I am not asking anything from you,” she said, which he thought was a rather peculiar way to begin. “You—you know her heritage, of course.”

He didn’t think that needed a response.

“As of this afternoon, you aren’t the only one who knows,” Acantha told him, and pressed her lips together as he absorbed the news.

“Who—”

“Everyone,” she said sourly. “Everyone who matters—all of her peers, and all of Society.”

Dirk’s jaw clenched at the implication that people like him, lowly half-bloods and muggleborns and even non-noble purebloods, didn’t matter. But though it stung, it was nothing new. He pushed it aside. “What does this mean?” He knew what it would mean for him—a scandal, gossip at the Ministry, maybe a sunken reputation amongst his pureblood colleagues, but then some other debacle would occur and people would slowly stop talking about it. He wouldn’t even lose his job; the goblins wouldn’t accept anyone else as long as he was still an option.

Acantha exhaled slowly. “Apollon broke our marriage bond and disowned Daphne. We aren’t welcome at Greengrass Manor any longer.”

Dirk shook his head. It didn’t feel like his mind quite processed the situation yet. “So, what, you want me to—”

“No,” Acantha said quickly. “I would not ask that from you. I only came to request your advice.”

He nodded. It would have been presumptuous even from Acantha to expect such generous hospitality from a man she’d callously thrown aside for the sake of her reputation, and he wasn’t sure how cohabitation with her and her daughter—her daughter, not his, not his—would work, anyways. “What advice?” Dirk hoped she would ask him for directions or something and leave. Just standing before her was already stirring up painful memories, and he’d worked hard to bury those.

She took a breath. “I have only a passing familiarity with the Lower Alleys, but we have nowhere else to go in such short notice. I would be—grateful if you could recommend a place of residence, temporary or otherwise.”

Acantha Carrow, living in the Lower Alleys? Dirk was momentarily tempted to direct her to the Lamia Lodge out of spite, but he restrained himself. (Though he was sure no one would blame him.)

“Alright,” he said. It wasn’t as if there was anyone waiting for him at home. And hopefully after this he’d send them on their way and never see them again. “I’ll help. Come inside and I’ll duplicate my map for you.”

Man, woman, and trembling girl filed into the house. The sound of Dirk’s first question drifted out through the door before it closed:

“How much money do you have?”

~~~

The answer, as it turned out, was not a lot.

Daphne gaped in disgust at the tiny shack that the owner had claimed was a cottage. They’d looked at a house in another one of these Lower Alley districts, named Flash, but Mother had told her that their money would be best spent on other things. Now, as the evening sun began to sink towards the horizon, they were in some rundown neighborhood called ‘Patten’, and Mother had said that they would be spending the next month here. _Here_ , in this small shed-looking building that didn’t look like it had more than two bedrooms. Daphne could probably cross the entire lawn in five steps. How were they supposed to live mere meters away from the edge of the street?

“Be thankful that we aren’t sleeping on the street itself,” Mother said. “I could only withdraw this money because the goblins didn’t care if I was magically or legally married, only that my name was still on the books. With this, we’ve already gone through half of what we have.”

“It’s not fair,” Daphne protested.

Mother sighed. “Nothing is fair, Daphne.”

“It’s not fair!” she repeated, shoulders trembling as she remembered the finality of her situation. It wasn’t a nightmare, it wasn’t a hallucination, and Daphne was not the Heiress of House Greengrass. “Why did you have to sleep with that muggleborn? I hate him! I hate you! Everything is your fault, so why do _I_ have to suffer? I wish you were all dead!”

She turned heel and stomped away down the stupid, dingy, muggleborn-infested street. The telltale tickle of a tracking charm settled on her neck. Daphne clenched her teeth to fight back a scream and broke into a run, pounding across the worn cobblestone, not looking where she was going or at anything around her, just running, running, running like if she flew fast and far enough she could escape the wreck her life had become.

“Alright there, lass?”

Daphne looked up from where she was doubled over in the shadow of a small antiques shop, gasping for breath and trying fruitlessly to wipe the tears from her face. A handsome, brown-haired boy was peering down at her with friendly concern. His eyes were a bright hazel.

“Go away,” she snapped. He was probably a muggleborn, after all, though she hadn’t thought a muggleborn could be so good-looking.

“Come on now, I can’t just leave you here like this. What’s wrong?” He scanned her up and down, and Daphne was suddenly aware of the stark difference between her expensive, custom-tailored Hogwarts robes and the boy’s sleeveless tunic that showed off his lean, muscular arms.

Daphne would have usually fallen over herself to flirt with someone with his looks, but right now she couldn’t care less. “Nothing,” she lied, and hastily scrubbed away the rest of her tears.

“You’re clearly upset,” the boy rebutted. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s perfectly fine, but one does get worried. Are you lost?”

“Of course not!” Daphne said. Did he really think that she was crying because she was _lost?_ She wasn’t a child.

“Well, are you staying in the Lower Alleys? I’ll can make sure you get home alright,” he offered.

Daphne glared at him. “No,” she said, tossing her hair. Without another word, she walked away.

Less than a minute later, she turned and stormed back to where the handsome boy was leaning against the wall of the antiques shop. “I accept,” she declared with as much dignity as she could muster. Anything was better than waiting for Mother to come collect her with the help of that damned tracking charm.

To his credit, the boy merely quirked a smile before pushing off the wall and looking down at her. “Where to?”

“… Blackbird Cottage,” Daphne sneered. She dreaded the thought of going to sleep in that ramshackle house.

“Nice place,” he responded easily, ignoring Daphne’s derisive scoff. “Let’s go.”

They set off up the street, passing by shops, casual eateries, and apartment buildings. Not two seconds would pass without some storeowner or young child shouting greetings at the handsome boy and sending curious looks at Daphne walking next to him.

“I’m Leo, by the way. You?”

No family name? Definitely a muggleborn. “Daphne G—” The syllables caught in her throat as she realized that she herself no longer had an impressive family name. Or was she a Carrow now? It was with great bitterness that she fell silent, scowling.

“Just Daphne?” Leo asked.

“Whatever,” she muttered.

“Daphne it is.”

They had only walked a little farther when a young boy ran up to them, large brown eyes peering curiously at Daphne. An older girl, his sister perhaps, followed behind. “Your Highness!” he exclaimed. There they went again, calling Leo ‘Your Highness’. A nickname? “Who’s this?”

“This is Daphne,” Leo told him, reaching out to ruffle his curly hair. “I’m making sure she gets back to her house okay.”

The girl squinted at Daphne, nose scrunching. “Are you collecting fourteen-year-old girls, Your Highness?”

Leo spluttered. “What—no. Just because she’s around the same age as Harry doesn’t mean—”

“Okay, I believe you,” the girl said, shrugging. “Bye, Your Highness.”

“Bye!” the little boy chirped.

“See you around, Tina, Matty,” Leo replied, shaking his head and waving as the two bounded away.

“Harry?” Daphne asked. Her mind jumped to Harriet Potter, Rigel Black’s half-blood cousin, but she knew there was no chance the little girl had been referring to her. A Book of Gold heiress would never hang about in these slums. _I shouldn’t be here either!_

“A friend,” Leo said vaguely. “You might see her around.”

Daphne sneered. It wouldn’t matter if she did. She didn’t plan on consorting with more of these street rats than strictly necessary, and they would get out of here soon enough, lack of money or not. They had to.

As they continued walking, Daphne noticed her surroundings become more familiar. After another minute in not-very-comfortable silence, Leo pointed up ahead and said, “There it is. Blackbird Cottage. Will you be good from here?”

“Yes,” Daphne said, glaring. It would take an extraordinarily stupid person to get lost between here and there. “So you can leave me alone now.”

Leo shrugged good-naturedly. “As you say. Also, you might want to hang on to your belongings whenever you go out,” he added. “Some of the kids around here like to steal things.”

Lovely, just what she would expect from a place like this. Daphne felt her breathing begin to quicken again, and she blurted out a choked “Bye” before whipping around and hurrying up the street towards Blackbird Cottage. Stupid cottage, stupid Patten district, stupid handsome boys, and stupid bloody Mother who slept with a muggleborn and _ruined Daphne’s life!_

Before Daphne made it all the way to the cottage, she looked back over her shoulder at the darkening street. Leo was silhouetted against the sunset, a tall retreating figure striding on with the ease and familiarity of someone who knew every corner and cobblestone of this narrow alley. He was visible there, there, there, then Daphne blinked and he melded seamlessly with the dusk.

~~~

The days passed, and the Lower Alleys grew more and more familiar.

Mother found a job as a clerk—a _clerk!_ —managing the inventory and financials of a foreign imports shop, earning money that she used to pay the rent on Blackbird Cottage and buy Daphne tunics and trousers and belts.

Daphne refused to wear them at first, horrified at the clothing that was so typical of the Alleys. It was bad enough that she was a half-blood, did she have to dress like one too? She feared putting it on, as if wearing a tunic and belt would anchor her to this déclassé existence and cut her last ties to Society for good. But of course she'd already been cut off from Society forever, and she couldn't wear her Hogwarts robes until they dissolved into threads.

The first time she donned the clothes Mother had bought, she shuddered at the strange, naked feeling of her exposed arms and the odd snugness of the trousers around her legs. The belt felt too constricting around her waist, but when loosened it hung sloppily and looked even more atrocious. Removing it only made the loose fabric of the tunic flap around her torso whenever the wind picked up. Horrid! When she looked in the mirror, she could hardly believe that only a week ago, this person had been Daphne Greengrass, Heiress of House Greengrass and Book of Gold nobility. Wearing this outfit felt like playing dress-up with Astoria like they had done as small children. Nothing about it felt natural, or even comfortable.

But she didn't have much of a choice.

In the beginning, Daphne's mother thought about Ilvermorny. She thought about the American Institute of Magic, she thought about Castelobruxo, she thought about Salem. They were all well-known schools that accepted half-bloods, and she insisted that Daphne would receive a good education.

"In _America?_ " Daphne exclaimed. All she knew about MACUSA was that it was notoriously blood-equalist and had even had a muggleborn president.

"You would do well there," Mother said, but Daphne thought she didn't sound as confident as she pretended to be.

Passage to the Americas was expensive, especially for a half-blood, and Lower Alleys clerks did not make much money. As time went on, Mother thought about it less and less, and she even removed the Trace from Daphne's wand so she could practice spells on her own.

"How did you know how to do that?" Daphne demanded. She was beginning to find that Mother had hidden more from her daughters than just her affair with Dirk Cresswell.

Mother quirked her lip. "It was useful," she replied, and would say nothing more.

So Daphne read her second-hand textbooks, more diligently than she'd ever done at Hogwarts because if she didn't study then she had nothing else to do but get lost in her thoughts and eventually end up crying again. And crying made her eyes unpleasantly puffy. She learned about enchantment matrices and spell theory and practiced banishing charms until she fell over. It didn't change her situation, but at least it prevented her from thinking too much about it.

She learned about Leo and the Court of the Rogue, she learned about the Strigoi Shrouds and the Carpathian Crypts, she learned about the Maywell Clinic and met Healer Hurst. She learned about the Cesspool, the _real_ slums of the Lower Alleys. She learned the names of the little wayward children who scampered to and fro and never seemed to be with an adult—Cora, Tina, Matty, Margo, and dozens of others. And somewhere in the middle of all that learning, she paused and realized that life in the Lower Alleys was beginning to feel... normal.

Bare arms made it easier to perform tasks without worrying about her sleeves getting caught, trousers made it easy to walk and run and dodge the occasional child underfoot, and sturdy boots kept her soles from getting sore as she traversed the Alleys. Daphne looked in the mirror, wearing a tunic and brown trousers and a perfectly-fitted belt, and she saw not a girl playing dress-up, but herself.

"My name is Daphne," she said to her reflection, tasting the words on her tongue. Not a Greengrass, not a Carrow. Just Daphne.

Still not quite natural, still not quite comfortable, but it was _her_. It was her, and not even Lord Riddle himself could take it away.

December came, and the Rogue was busier than she'd ever seen him, trying to ensure that everyone in the Alleys made it through the winter. But soon spring arrived with no great tragedies, and Daphne had found a job. Not an official one, not a very respectable one, and not even one that paid. It was more like charity work, which Daphne had never done—aside from attending various Society galas. But despite the lack of money and prestige, she found herself enjoying it more than any gala.

Daphne was a teacher.

She'd come across a boy a bit older than her trying to explain to a gaggle of children the difference between wanded casting and wandless casting. By then she had absorbed enough spell theory that his glaring errors were too much to stand.

"That's not right at all," she interrupted, crossing her arms. Three months in the Alleys had not completely eroded her haughtiness, and the boy sent her a miffed look. "Where did you even hear that?"

"Well, if you know so much, why don't you teach them?" he retorted.

"In fact, I think I will," Daphne sniffed, and sat down so close to him that he was forced to give up his seat. "All right. I'm going to explain to you the true difference between wanded and wandless casting. Firstly, ignore everything he just said."

"Hey!"

From that day on, Daphne spent her afternoons teaching the Lower Alleys children everything from reading and writing to tiny feats of wandless magic. The drawer of her bedside table was filled with secret letters from Astoria. Mother continued clerking at the imports shop and somehow entered a relationship with a woman who lived in the Market district. And by the time the world discovered who Rigel Black really was, the Lower Alleys were—it couldn't be denied—home.

The word spread that Harriet Potter had fled here, to the Alleys. Daphne scoffed and tossed her hair, but there was no malice in her expression.

“I always knew he—she was hiding something,” she said, pursing her lips.

“You knew Harry when she was at Hogwarts?” asked Cora, who’d told her the news.

Daphne huffed a laugh. “Yes, not that I realized. Come on, now, finish your multiplication.”

“Fine,” Cora groaned. Daphne ruffled her hair just like she used to do to Astoria, and shook her head in disbelief.

Who knew the Book of Gold heiress actually _had_ been hanging around the Lower Alleys?

**Author's Note:**

> I ran out of time but I will be adding more! Stay tuned!


End file.
